Who’s opinion you should be listening to when it comes to how you sell your product.

And what voting with your credit card even means.

So listen here to find out why you should only be concerned with your customer’s opinions of you.

Full Episode Transcript

Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson with the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I want to talk about who gets a vote in their opinion about you.

Alright everybody, so there’s this weird thing that us humans have, where we care what other people think. I know, I know, it’s what gives us empathy and makes us actually good people most of the time, but in business it can cripple you. In fact, it does for so many of you guys, as I watch as you start an advertizing campaign and somebody in your ad says, “You suck!” and you’re like, “Waaaa” and you crumple and you cry and the whole thing falls apart.

You stop running the ads because someone told you that you’re lame, or that your ad was funny, or that you’re goofy, or whatever and you freak out and stop moving forward and the whole thing collapses because you cared about somebody else’s opinion about you.

So I want to help you on this journey to stop caring about everybody, except for one type of person. There’s only one person that has earned the right to have an opinion about you, and that is the person who has given you money. That’s it. That’s the only opinion you should care about, the opinion of the person who gives you money.

And this is in so many different aspects of business. For example, when I first started speaking, and I even to this day, I’m not the best speaker, you guys have probably noticed that. I get excited, and so people are like, “Oh he’s a good speaker, he’s excited.” But no, I stutter, I say um’s and ah’s, and crap and all these things. If you look at, if I was to go to the NSA, the National Speaker’s Association and get judged, they would destroy me, it would be horrible.

So when I first started doing events, I was like, after the event I would hand these little papers to everybody and I was like, “Hey can you give me some feedback on the speakers.” And guess what people gave me, their freaking opinions. And guess what, their opinions, I remember reading them and being destroyed. “this person thought I was horrible.” And they were so mean about all these different things.

I remember taking it really internally for a long time and stressing about it and freaking out about it, until one day I was listening to good old, mean Dan Kennedy and Dan said something that was so liberating to me, that I need to share with you. He said, “The only people’s opinion I care about, are the people who give me money.” And he talked about speaking from stage, he’s like, “I used to do this thing and at the end of my presentation everyone would fill out a form to critique me. They would hand me a big stack of forms, I would immediately walk over to the garbage and I would throw them away without reading any of them. The only thing that matters to me, whether or not I did good on speech or not, is how many people line up at the back of the room to give me money. That is the judge of how well you did. That’s it.”

When you’re running ads, it’s not how many people write nasty comments in the things, all the haters and trolls and annoying people like that. It’s how many people actually gave you money. How many people did your ad, your persuasive, your presentation, your funnel whatever, did it convince people to give money? That’s the only thing that matters.

One of the worst things I see people do all the time is, and I understand it because us funnel people like that, we all want people to critique our funnels before they’re done. I’ll see it all the time in our Facebook group and other places, “Hey can you come and critique my funnel?” and people are giving all sorts of advice, and I’m reading the advice and I’m like, don’t take advice from people. People lie, they don’t know they’re lying, but they’re lying. They’re going to give you advice like, “Oh you should do this, you should do this, you should change this.”

The only opinion that matters are the people voting with their credit cards. That should be the only thing that matters. If they pull a credit card out of their wallet to buy something, that is the opinion that matters. That is the only split test I’m going to look at, not people’s opinions, because people’s opinions are wrong. They’re not entitled to their own opinion when it comes to marketing and sales. The opinion of the marketplace is the only thing that matters, and it’s how people vote with their wallet.

So I wanted to share with you guys this, because I know so many of you guys get crippled by that fear of what other people think and you should stop. The only thing you should care about are the people, that’s the only opinion you should care about, the opinions of the people who are actually giving you money because they’re the one’s that matter.

If someone hates your ad, they don’t buy your thing, they talk trash on your webinar because they’re like, “Oh, I’ve already heard this 5 times before. When are you going to get to the good stuff? Stop telling me your story, all I want you to do is tell me the one secret about blah.” Those people are not giving you money, therefore you should not care about their opinion. The one’s you should care about are the ones who hear your voice and they come to you and they’re looking for a change in their life. Those are the one’s you should care about, those who give you money.

Now when people give me money, and they give me feedback, then I pay attention. When someone’s like, “hey, I’m in your coaching program, this part is confusing to me, I’m stuck here. I don’t know what to do.” I listen to those opinions and I try to figure out how to serve them better. But I don’t focus on how to serve the people who aren’t voting with their credit cards. Their vote is invalid in my mind and it should be in yours as well because they are not your customers. The customer is the only thing that actually matters.

So I hope that gives you guys freedom and permission to just be like, “Ah, thank heavens.” Because they’re the only ones entitled to have a vote. All the rest of the haters and the annoying people and those kind of things. Tune them out, ignore them, they do not matter to you and they shouldn’t. So hopefully that helps somebody.

Anyway, I just dropped the kids off at school, we have today, and tomorrow is the last day of school and then it’s officially Summer. I’m not sure if I’m ready for this, but it’s happening. I just remember last weekend, by the end of the weekend I was so tired I was ready for the kids to go back to school and now there’s this 3 month long weekend coming up. Hopefully we can survive it. Oh man, it’s going to be awesome.

This weekend I’m actually driving to Utah. I am a finalist of an entrepreneur of the year award. So it will be kind of fun to see if I have a chance to win that, which would be cool. I’m driving with my wife and my kids, and coming down. So maybe, just maybe if I can do it, my goal is to catch my wife on a podcast during the drive to Utah. Many of you guys have been asking for the podcast where Collette shares her thoughts on being married to a crazy entrepreneur, so I’m going to try for all you guys. It’s not going to be easy, she doesn’t enjoy it, she doesn’t like it, she doesn’t feel comfortable doing it, but I’m going to see if I can get her to share, because some of you guys want to know.

So that’s all I got guys. I appreciate you all, have an amazing day. Don’t forget the only person who should matter are the people voting with their wallets. Your opinion doesn’t matter, other people’s opinions don’t matter, the only things that matter are your customers. I hope that helps you guys, appreciate you all, have an amazing day and we’ll talk soon. Bye everybody.

Who is Russell Brunson?

Over the past 10 years, Russell has built a following of over a million entrepreneurs, sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his books, popularized the concept of sales funnels, and co-founded a software company called ClickFunnels that helps tens of thousands of entrepreneurs quickly get their message out to the marketplace.